Tooth and Nail

by Chris Bonnello

  ‘I won’t lie,’ said Mark, reaching for the laptop’s power button. ‘I thought this one would be harder.’

  ‘Don’t switch it off,’ snapped Kate. ‘We need to take a look. This might tell us what we’ll find in New London.’

  Mark grunted, and stepped aside. Kate minimised the progress bar – checking, double-checking and triple-checking she was not about to press ‘OK’ – and started to search.

  There was surprisingly little to search through. The most interesting result was a list of coordinates – about fifty of them – in a program that clearly had something to do with the AME controls. Curiously enough, the GPS coordinates were all nearly identical, with just a few differing numbers at the end of each one. Whatever these things were, they were in almost exactly the same place.

  ‘Guys,’ she whispered into the radio. Mark saw her, and turned his own radio back on. ‘I think I know what those land-mine-shaped objects are for.’

  ‘Oh,’ added Mark, ‘and the guy we mentioned is now dead. Good job he fell asleep on duty – the shield was one button away from going up.’

  The others expressed surprise, but Kate stopped listening. She scanned through the contents of the man’s laptop, and found nothing more of use. In the background, Raj said something about an interesting find in the library.

  ‘Can’t see anything useful here,’ she whispered.

  ‘Right then,’ said Mark, raising the butt of his assault rifle, ‘if you’ll allow me…’

  ‘No, don’t just smash it. They’ll be clever enough to put the pieces back together. This needs to be really destroyed… whisky’s flammable, right?’

  ‘What, so I should pour my precious single malt over a computer and set it alight? Besides, we’d have no way of putting out the fire once it starts. Let’s get some acid.’

  He headed for the exit, not bothering to check the corridors as he walked into them.

  ‘Acid?’ asked Kate.

  ‘Yeah, from chemistry.’

  ‘They never had anything that could melt a computer…’

  ‘No, they didn’t. But if you do your research, you can combine the boring stuff to make a corrosive solution. And it’s corroding, not melting.’

  Kate followed Mark around the next corner, wondering what kind of person Mark could have been in a different life. He was capable, intelligent, determined and had no diagnoses that she knew of. Oakenfold wasn’t designed for people like him, even though life had led him there.

  ‘The lab’s the other way,’ said Kate.

  ‘Staff room first,’ Mark replied, pointing at the next door down.

  ‘Looking for more drink?’

  ‘Looking for keys. They never kept chemistry stuff in unlocked cupboards.’

  He opened the door to the staff room. It was windowless, and pitch black. Mark, without a moment’s thought, switched on the light.

  The room lit up to reveal a dusty, lifeless room. Empty mugs of tea rested on tables full of teachers’ marking, the writing on the staff whiteboard had faded away, and a collection box for school pantomime tickets had collected a year’s worth of dust.

  But Mark was worried.

  ‘Someone else is here,’ he whispered. ‘That other guy had a friend.’

  Kate scanned the room for clues, and found literally nothing. If someone were to try designing a room to look as dull and boring as possible, they could not have done better than the sight in front of her.

  ‘How do you—’

  ‘Guys,’ Mark said into his radio, ‘there’s at least one more of them. Be careful.’

  He looked into Kate’s eyes, the fear in his face clear and obvious.

  ‘We need to get back to the office. Before someone else finds the computer still on.’

  There was a noise. Kate turned round just in time to see a uniformed figure run past the staff room, straight towards Paul’s office.

  Mark opened fire, and missed.

  Chapter 7

  When Kate fired her own bullet, it struck the man in his lower leg. It didn’t appear to slow him down; he stumbled and shrieked, but hopped around the corner of the corridor as fast as he would have done anyway, perhaps carried by his own momentum.

  ‘Get him!’ Mark yelled, the expected ferocity in his voice replaced with worry. Kate did not need telling twice, and charged with all her energy towards the corner. She knew the risk of the man lying in wait behind the wall with a pistol pointed in her direction, but she ran anyway. Something told her the man would be more interested in reaching Paul’s office than winning a gunfight.

  When she and Mark turned the corner, she was proven correct. They were just in time to see the door to the office slam shut, and heard the locking mechanism as they approached. The door was sturdy – thick and secure enough to keep any staff member safe from a violent student or an ambitious burglar. This would not be easy.

  There was an electric scream of ‘Pete!!’ from behind the door. The man in the chair with the carved throat now had a name: one that would stick in Kate’s memory until the day she died.

  Mark got to the door first, and smashed the little square window with the butt of his rifle. He was answered by a short burst of pistol fire, and jerked his head away from the spray of wooden splinters that spat from the empty window frame. Kate reached the door and poked her rifle through the window just in time to see the man grab the laptop in both hands and haul it to the floor, before her own bullets shredded the surface of the desk where the laptop had been.

  Crap, he only needs to push one button .

  But I can’t hear a shield going up outside. Or even anything being pressed in here . W hy hasn’t he just done it?

  She looked at Mark’s disgusted face. His eyes were pointed at a bullet wound in his upper arm, most likely from return fire after he had smashed the window. Reaching through and opening the door with the inside handle would not be an option.

  ‘You made a big mistake, mate,’ Mark yelled to the sheltering figure. ‘Back when you used the staff room.’

  ‘Really?’ replied the man. ‘I didn’t touch anything in there except the kettle…’

  Does he really care, or is he playing for time?

  Mark Gunnarsson is stood outside the door planning to kill him. Of course he’s playing for time.

  ‘You touched the light switch,’ said Mark. ‘Oakenfold’s full of those crap energy-saving bulbs that need three minutes to warm up. I walked in, switched them on and the place lit up in a split-second. The bulbs were still warm, and your mate was asleep. Someone else must have used them earlier.’

  ‘Huh, how clever of you. Are you sure you were a student here? You’re not nearly stupid enough. What a way to live your life.’

  ‘Yeah, well you’re about to get killed by a retard. Proud way to go.’

  Kate bit her lip. The confrontation would have to end sooner rather than later. But the door was firmly locked, and the man was hidden behind Paul’s desk where bullets could not reach him.

  Then she remembered the other weapons they were carrying. She pointed to Mark’s belt, and he nodded.

  ‘Back in a bit,’ he whispered. ‘Keep him busy.’

  Mark turned and fled, clutching his reddening upper arm, and left Kate to face the bullets alone. How she was supposed to prevent the man in the office from raising the shield, she had no idea. His laptop was right in front of him, and he was one button away from success.

  And again… w hy hasn’t he done it already ?

  *

  ‘Raj, we need to go!’

  ‘Why?’ asked Raj, thumbing through the paperwork balanced on the library shelves. ‘The gunfight’s over there, we’re over here. The others can handle it. What’s going on here is important.’

  ‘No,’ yelled Gracie, ‘we have to get outside! Back to Jack!’

  ‘He’ll never be your boyfriend, Gracie. Come here, I need you to help me read this.’

  By the time Raj had looked up Gracie had fled, leaving nothing but the sound of her
running footsteps. Raj breathed a sigh in the most irritated tone he could manage, and refocused on his work.

  The school library had been turned into a miniature archive for the AME project. The original contents of the bookshelves had been thrown to the corners of the room – everything from the children’s encyclopaedias to the advice books for young adults applying for work – and replaced by binders of paperwork that must have been important to the team that had worked here.

  Wow, Ewan picked the wrong Underdogs to search these rooms, Raj thought. God, if you’re going to bless me with the sudden ability to read, now would be a good time.

  A thought struck Raj which made him stand bolt upright. Divine intervention or not, it saved a lot of time.

  Raj’s mother had spent most of his childhood calling him ‘my little detective’, since he could see straight to the root of any problem without being distracted by the extra details that got in everyone else’s way. With or without the ability to read, Detective Raj Singh had the perfect brain for this task. He didn’t need to learn the entire dictionary to find the information worth stealing. He just needed to find the documents with the right key words.

  We’re here to work out what to do in New London… so those are the two words I need to look for. I just need to find a capital N followed by a capital L. And look for ‘ AME ’ too . Even I can spell that one.

  Raj grabbed the first file that came within reach. A quick browse revealed none of the magic words. The next file revealed none of them either. Raj wondered whether this was what browsing foreign language books felt like for the average person.

  The third file contained ‘N– L—–‘ and ‘AME’ in the same paragraph. It was hopeful. He opened it up, and smiled at the sight of diagrams.

  One of them was a map of the Outer City.

  My little detective, said his mother’s voice in his head.

  *

  Kate poked her face through the smashed window to the office. The dead body of Pete stared back at her, his frightened expression stuck to his face like a horrible waxwork sculpture. There were shuffling sounds from the carpet behind the desk, and Kate shuddered. The man’s hands and knees must have been dragging through his colleague’s blood as he crawled. Perhaps the blood from his lower leg was mixing with it too…

  ‘Phone, on!’ he called out. On her head teacher’s desk, Kate saw the sudden rectangular shine of a smartphone screen. It let out a little ping, which the man barely waited to hear before shouting again.

  ‘Call Nathaniel Pearce, speaker!’

  Kate sighed. Voice-activated technology meant her enemy would not have to break cover in order to call for reinforcements, or even be close to his phone to communicate.

  The phone was answered within one ring.

  ‘Talk to me, Hargreaves.’

  It was definitely Pearce. Kate had heard his voice back in New London, the day they destroyed the clone factory.

  ‘Pearce!’ Hargreaves screamed. ‘They’re here, and they’ve killed Simmonds!’

  ‘Is the shield up yet?’

  Pete Simmonds. And now Hargreaves. Now I’ m going to have two names burned in my memory through guilt . If I live .

  Hang on , Pearce, you were just told one of your staff was dead! Do you even care?

  It was obvious he didn’t. Kate wasn’t much of a logician, but it must have meant that Pearce had a priority for the night that outweighed the well-being of his staff. No competent villain would throw their minions away as if they didn’t matter… unless there was something else that mattered more.

  She also knew that the longer she let Pearce talk on the phone, the worse off she would be. She leapt in front of the window and fired bullets at the desk, none of which struck the tiny smartphone. A hand popped over the desk and returned fire, forcing her to shelter. Once the bullets stopped, she peered again and saw the phone in the corner of the room. In his panic to grab it, Hargreaves must have sent it flying across the office. Unfortunately, it lay out of range for Kate as well.

  ‘Well?’ Pearce asked, his volume unaffected by his phone’s new location. ‘Is it on yet?’

  ‘No,’ Hargreaves shouted from behind the desk, ‘it’s not.’

  Kate sighed with relief.

  ‘Simmonds told me it was ready for launch three hours ago,’ said Pearce. ‘What are you wai—’

  ‘And if you’d have let us launch it at midnight, the dead body next to me would still be al—’

  ‘Hargreaves, calm down. If the shield’s ready, it’s your duty to raise it. Trap them all inside.’

  That was the plan all along… lure us here and make it impossible for us to escape.

  ‘Just send in the Harpenden squad!’ the voice behind the desk began to wail. ‘They’re only a mile away!’

  ‘And give the rebels time to destroy the shield? It needs testing. Raise it now.’

  Kate fired a couple more bullets at the filing cabinets, hoping that a bullet would at least ricochet behind the desk. They did nothing but puncture the metal, and make Hargreaves yell in fright.

  ‘Now!’ yelled Pearce from the corner of the room.

  ‘Get the army here and save me, and then I’ll push the button.’

  All I need to do is keep him panicking…

  ‘I hear gunfire,’ said Pearce. ‘You don’t have that long left.’

  ‘I might…’

  Kate tried to think of something she could shout into the room to influence the conversation, but no words came to mind. Besides, knowing her, she would say something wrong and persuade Hargreaves to raise the shield after all.

  ‘Jonathan,’ said Pearce, who unlike Kate knew precisely what to say, ‘do you know why all our families have luxury accommodation in New London’s walls?’

  ‘Because otherwise nobody would agree to work with you?’

  ‘Wrong. It’s so that every employee has something to lose. In your case, it’s Louise, Michael and Jessica. Turn the bloody shield on.’

  The line cut out. It was a cold and cruel tactic which Pearce must have known would work: remove the other person’s chance to speak, show that you don’t value their words, and the other person won’t value them either. People had done that to Kate all the time back in the old world.

  ‘Jonathan,’ she yelled to the man inside, hoping the first-name approach would help, ‘he said something about the Harpenden squad being a mile away? You know they won’t let you live, right? If we die, you die with us.’

  ‘I’ll be keeping my family safe,’ the man muttered, barely audible. ‘That’s all the consolation I need.’

  ‘Safe from Grant, Marshall and Pearce? These guys are threatening your family and you’re siding with them?’

  ‘Makes no difference now…’

  Kate’s jaw dropped. She had heard the futility in the man’s voice, so blatant that even a girl like Kate could identify it.

  ‘You’ve already pressed it, haven’t you?’

  No answer.

  Try not to panic. You’re going to worry, you’re going to get anxious, but try not to panic.

  ‘But we haven’t seen a flash or anything,’ she continued, ‘so it must take a minute to charge up. How long have we got?’

  ‘If you escape Oakenfold, my family gets thrown into the Inner City.’

  ‘How long?’

  ‘Less with every second.’

  There was a disturbance in the light behind the office’s back window. Kate jumped at the sudden appearance of Mark, who lifted his hands into view: a handgun butt in one, and a grenade in the other.

  Kate was shocked, but understood that the laptop needed to be destroyed even if the shield couldn’t be stopped. Nonetheless, she felt guilty for reminding Mark about the grenade in his belt before he had run. Mark smashed the glass with his rifle butt, pulled the grenade pin and dropped it through the empty window. It bounced on the floor to the sound of a shriek from Hargreaves before it exploded, ripping him and his laptop to pieces.

  Kate was thrown to
the back wall of the corridor by the force of the explosion. Suffering from instant sensory overload, she could not tell whether the word ‘sorry’ from Mark in her radio was real or psychosomatic. But as the ringing in her ears faded and the sight returned to her eyes, she heard him asking something. Whatever it was, it didn’t matter. Her hand scrambled to her radio, although she screamed loud enough to be heard school-wide without it.

  ‘Everyone get out!’ she yelled and she rose to all fours and pushed herself onto her knees. ‘Reinforcements are coming, the shield has been activated, and it’s charging up right now! Get outside!’

  Kate didn’t hear the responses. If her friends had any sense, they wouldn’t waste time replying.

  What about his family? She asked herself as she tried to stand.

  Yeah, came a sarcastic answer, perhaps Mark’s own thoughts invading her head, let’s sacrifice six Underdogs so a bad guy’s wife and kids can live in luxury. No, we’re going.

  Kate staggered to her feet and jogged in an approximate straight line, picking up speed as she went. If her life weren’t under threat, it might have felt liberating to run in the school corridors. Once she got into her rhythm she found herself sprinting faster than she ever had as a student. Even as a gymnast, she had never been so athletic. The new Kate Arrowsmith, hardened through a year of combat, ran so fast that her feet could barely support the shifting weight above them. It was like running downhill, except in the dark.

  She reached the school’s entrance. Against all common sense, and the imaginary noise of her brain screaming at her to reach safety, she grabbed the nearest fire extinguisher and used it to wedge the door wide open. The others might not have time to open the door for themselves.

  Kate ran exhausted through the car park, and stumbled past the little metal objects that looked like landmines. They were starting to hum and make aggressive electrical sounds. Mark had already stopped a few metres beyond them, in a position he assumed to be safe. In the background, Gracie could be seen heading for the hill. She must have been looking for Jack.